Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to Drama.

This is practising physical and vocal skills.

It's lesson three or five, physical skills part one.

My name is Mr. Wood, and I'm your teacher for this unit.

If you're ready, let's get going.

For this lesson, you're going to need plenty of space.

Okay, so make sure that there's nothing around you which could potentially cause danger or harm to you as you move around the space.

If you can do that for me now, we'll get started.

By now, I hope you've done your introductory quiz.

Well done if that's already done.

If not, there's time for you to do that now.

We're going to continue with a recap of last lesson and what we achieved.

We'll then continue with looking at emotions and what that means for us with physical skills.

And then, we will continue with scenarios that demand physical skills.

Before we finish with our exit quiz.

Your keywords for today are: facial expressions.

And they are positions of the face that communicate emotion, thoughts and feelings.

Gesture is a movement, often hand, but can also be things like head, that express an idea or meaning.

And emotion, that is a strong feeling derived from someone's circumstance or mood.

So let's begin by recapping the last lesson.

We continued to explore vocal skills and we specifically looked at pace, emphasis, tone and volume.

We did this by looking at a text and we started off by having a couple of lines of that text.

It developed and expanded into a whole piece.

We explored thought-tracking and what that means for us, initial thoughts in a particular scenario.

And also, an aside, which is similar to a thought-track.

Is where you almost dip out of the scene and you've directly address your audience to tell them what you are thinking at that moment in time.

For example, it may be in complete contrast to what you're saying on the stage to a character.

So emotions, let's start looking at those.

What emotions are there? If I was to do this, would this give you a clue? What about this one? What about this one? What about this one? Okay, are there any emotions that you can think of that I haven't shown you? Have at least a look at this table.

I would like you to identify the positive emotions from what's there.

So we have happiness, confusion, anger, sadness, fear, love, excitement, pain and shock.

What are the positive ones? Hopefully you've identified that there is happiness, there is love, there is excitement.

The rest are either negative or somewhere in the middle.

Okay, somewhere between the two.

So where can we see emotion? I gave you a clue earlier when I used a part of my body.

And the image will help you, it is the face.

So facial expressions can be one of the first ways to detect emotion.

Is that true or false? The answer is true.

The face can tell us much about the emotion that the character is feeling.

So let's try and recognise some emotion in the face.

Have a look at the table and tell me which emotions I might be showing.

Did you say fear? You would have been right? What about this one? Pain? Well done if you said that.

What about this one? If you said shock, well done.

What about this one? If you said excitement, well done you.

Okay, we have the other four we covered earlier.

So you guys have a go at showing instantly recognisable emotions, right? Specifically through your facial expressions.

However, I would like you to experiment with showing happiness in your face three different ways.

Think about what makes it recognisable as an emotion.

Too many people think about what you've seen in others and you can copy that.

Okay.

In the face, happiness, three different ways.

Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on.

Before we continue with the rest of this lesson, we need to get our faces warmed up.

So can you copy me as best as you can.

We're going to start warming up the muscles in our face.

So imagine you have a piece of chewing gum in your mouth.

Okay, or a really sticky toffee.

I would like you to imagine you're chewing it and it's putting your teeth together.

And you're fighting to pull it apart, okay? Think about what that does to the face as you chew through a bit.

You're trying desperately to pull your jaw apart.

You would, if you could just pull it open, but you can't.

Okay and now start rotating your jaw, almost like a camel chewing grass.

Or your favourite animal that chews grass.

On the other way.

Ah, cause a wiggly.

Okay.

Make sure your jaw is nice and warm.

Now we're going to be doing some U, Es.

Okay, by that we have, U, which is the mouth coming down and to an E we go back.

Okay, so Uu Ee.

Follow me Uu, Ee, Uu, Ee.

We can take out the sound unless you want to do it.

Okay lovely.

Now just tilt your head to the side for me.

And same again to the other side.

Repeat that for me and back again and rolling all the way around.

And back and back to normal, okay.

Next thing I would like you to frown at me please.

Bring those eyebrows all the way down and then take them up.

Drop them down and back up and down, and up.

Lovely.

Okay.

Now I would like you to chatterbox.

By that I mean, Okay, do that with me.

Three, two, one.

You'll notice there's no sound of my teeth chattering, but it gives the image of a chatterbox.

We're protecting our teeth.

We're not going all the way down to clunk clunk, clunk.

Okay.

If you need to copy any of that again, please rewind and watch it through.

If not, let's continue with the next activity.

Okay.

If you were to look closer, you can see emotion in the face go to the rest of the body.

Okay, it's going to flow out from the face and into every other part of the body.

And this is what we call body language.

Okay, it's the way in which the body communicates its own intentions.

And that can primarily be emotion, raw emotion.

The actions of the person in the image might be telling us something similar to that face.

Okay and this scenario is true.

They're very closed.

The face looks quite stern and quite cross and the body follows suit.

Okay, so it's quite harsh lines in the elbow there and the arms are kept quite neat in close to the body.

We're going to start exploring recognisable emotions through the body now, okay.

So I'd like you to think about showing happiness, just like we did in the face, three different ways.

But now transform that and let it evolve into the rest of the body.

Okay, don't think about keeping all the energy up here let it flow out into the rest of you.

Think about those traits of happiness.

If someone you saw, let's say standing in front of you was happy, how would they appear from your perspective? As you practise this, think about what other people see.

Okay and what their perspective is too.

To them, would you look happy? Okay.

Pause the video, give it your best go.

Click resume when you are ready to carry on.

Now we need to think about gestures.

Gestures can be very helpful in communicating emotions to an audience.

They can be tiny.

They could be the most exaggerated thing in the world.

But in essence, they are still a gesture.

It should aim to compliment the emotions you're showing in your face and in your body.

Alright.

Facial expressions, body language and gestures, all go together very nicely.

Take a look at the image.

Do we agree that those hand gestures are complimentary of the emotion? Can you identify the emotion? If you said confusion, you'd be right.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay.

Think about creating gestures for the following.

"Hi." What sort of gesture would you do that? "No." What sorts of gesture might be used for that word? What if the comment was, "Come here"? What sort of gesture would you use that? And "Shhhh." What sort of gesture is appropriate for that? Do you have a wave in that? Do you have a "No", or a, "You can't do that." Do you have a, you can't see that, but okay.

Moving forwards of the finger.

Do you have a finger over the mouth? Okay.

Various different ideas there for those quick examples.

Now you're going to experiment with making a gesture and you can use your hands, your arms, or even your head to communicate the following.

Anger.

Excitement.

Love.

And pain.

Okay, so come up with one clear gesture for each of those emotions.

Use your facial expressions and body language to assist you in making them.

For example, if we were doing one for, let's say confusion, a little while ago, and we had the gestures up here.

If the face was doing this, we wouldn't necessarily understand that it was confusion Okay, so allow your facial expressions and your body language to assist you.

Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on.

Which gesture would be best suited to being confused? Would we put our hands in fists? Would we put a hand on our head? Would we put hands behind our back or hand on stomach? What do you think? What's the most appropriate gesture there? Option one, two, three or four? If you said option two, well done.

I think that's the most appropriate one, hand on the head perhaps.

Lovely.

Scenarios demanding physical skills are up next.

So we need to think about what physical skills are going to be needed.

Moments to explore physical skills.

We've got scene one.

You are at the till in the shop and cannot decide between three different snacks.

You can only afford one.

You've been choosing for 10 minutes.

So imagine you were at the till in the shop and you cannot decide between three different snacks.

You can only afford one.

You've been choosing for 10 minutes.

Explore your facial expressions, explore your body language and your gestures in an attempt to communicate your emotions.

You need to pause the video to complete this task, click resume when you're ready to continue.

So can you identify any emotion in your scene? Do you have indecisiveness? Do you have anger? Do you have excitement? Do you have frustration? Which one's the strongest there? And do you still have elements of others within your scene? Scene two, you are in the queue in the shop, someone in front of you cannot decide what snack to buy.

You've been waiting now for 10 minutes.

So now when you are in the queue in the shop, someone in front of you cannot decide what snack to buy.

You've been waiting now for 10 minutes.

Explore those facial expressions, the body language and gestures to communicate your intentions and your emotions.

Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on.

Now, can you identify the emotion in that scene? Did you have any sadness? Was there any anger? Excitement? Even frustration? Was there let's say a combination between maybe two or three? Scene three, you are walking past a shop and you hear an argument of sorts coming from inside.

Noises of a scuffle and silence.

You stand still waiting eagerly for a sound.

So now you are walking past a shop and you hear an argument of sorts coming from inside.

Noises of a scuffle and silence.

You stand still waiting eagerly for sound.

I wonder what happens next.

Use your facial expressions, your body language and gestures to communicate your emotions, just like we have done before, but in a new scenario.

Pause the video right now to complete the task and click resume when you are ready to continue.

So finally, what emotions could you identify within that scene? Was there excitement? Confusion? Sadness? Shock? Was there one prominent emotion there or a mixture of a few? Well done.

Now we got to the end of the lesson.

Let's just quickly summarise what we've gone through today and what we're going to see next lesson.

So we've started to look at various physical skills through different stimuli.

So we've looked at three different scenarios today, all centering around the same location, but in an attempt to explore different physical skills.

We started off by looking at facial expressions to be able to determine where emotions come from.

Then we developed that knowledge and understanding and pulled into body language as well, using those emotions in the body.

And then we added to that knowledge and understanding with gestures, okay.

So trying to make emotions easily recognisable on a stage, in a scene for an audience.

Okay.

Well done for all of your hard work today.

I hope you've enjoyed some of the activities in today's lesson.

I look forward to physical skills, part two, which is lesson four.

Until then it's goodbye and take care.

If you would like to share work with us, here's what you can do.

Just ask your parent or carer for permission first, they can share your work on Twitter, tagging us with @OakNational and hashtag LearnwithOak.

Until our next lesson, take care.

Bye-bye.